Piston Cooling

Piston Cooling:


In Simerics-MP+, the cooling of an engine piston using oil jet can be simulated accurately to design the piston with coolant gallery. The customized piston template in Simerics-MP+ automates the model setup for multiphase heat transfer simulation including the piston motion and its interaction with the oil jet. The “Mixed Time Scale” coupling method has been used in the template to resolve the huge timescale differences in conjugate heat transfer. The simulation method is extensively validated and the piston temperature predictions are found to be in good agreement with experimental data.



More details can be found in the following papers.

Technical Papers:


1. Chen, Y., Schlautman, J., and Dhar, S., “Experimental and Numerical Investigation of the Multiphase Flow and Heat Transfer in an Oil Jet Cooled Engine Piston,” SAE Technical Paper 2020-01-0165, 2020, doi:10.4271/2020-01-0165.


2. Dhar, S., Godavarthi, R., Mishra, A., Bedekar, S. et al., “A Transient, 3-Dimensional Multiphase CFD/Heat Transfer and Experimental Study of Oil Jet Cooled Engine Pistons,” SAE Technical Paper 2019-01-0154, 2019, doi:10.4271/2019-01-0154.

Discriminators:

  • Automated moving mesh for the piston motion and coolant gallery
  • Built-in data exchange module for coupled flow and thermal simulation
  • Robust VOF multiphase solver with heat transfer
  • Accurate capture of oil-air interface with less diffusion
  • Piston template makes the CFD model setup in few minutes
  • Fast turnaround speed
  • Ease of use

Design Issues/Benefits:

  • Predict piston temperatures and oil capture efficiency
  • Optimize piston coolant gallery shape
  • Optimize oil jet trajectory and its interaction with piston motion
  • Can simulate pistons with different gallery shapes (e.g. axisymmetric, non-axisymmetric)
  • Can simulate different jet orientations (aligned and non-aligned with piston motion direction)
  • Can simulate multiple pistons of an engine